Silver

by Graham Masterton

  It was a hot, clear afternoon; one of those Denver days that are all blue sky and fragmented clouds and ozone, clear off the mountains. To the east, as far as Henry could see, the landscape was flat and dust-coloured and hazed with heat, not a tree for miles. But to the west, there was always that hallucinatory range of snow-capped mountains, the Front Range, and somewhere in that range his fortune lay buried. He kept turning and staring at the mountains, until he looked back and saw that Edward was staring at him suspiciously.

  ‘Something on your mind?’ Edward inquired.

  Henry shook his head.

  ‘Here, then,’ said Edward, and passed him the bottle of Taos Lightning.

  At three o’clock, the orchestra started playing, a ragged assembly of trombonists, cornet players, drum-bangers, and violinists; one of whom was an extraordinarily tall woman with hair as bright as a fire and a green dress that clung to her like snakeskin. Tight dresses were fashionable in New York this year, but as Edward remarked, ‘not on anybody taller’n your average spruce’.

  Henry began to develop a hangover in the back of his neck as the show started up. There were two fire-eaters, known as Les Deux Allumettes; one of whom managed to set a string of bunting ablaze, reminding Henry with a strange sharp feeling of the night on which he had burned down the Colossal Whirler. These were followed by Madame Pretty and her Dancing Dogs, an act which brought roars of approval and cries for more; especially from the coarser spectators by the What Comfort saloon, who particularly liked Madame Pretty’s wobbling white bust and well-filled fishnet stockings, and hang the dogs. There was Ecell-0 the performing mono-cyclist, who smoked a cigar and sang ‘My Dear Old Mother Ireland’ while operating a glove-puppet with each hand and carrying a girl on his shoulders, all on his mono-cycle, of course. He was followed by D’Artagnan the Mousquetaire who sliced shreds of coloured paper out of the same girl’s lips with the tip of his rapier, which he assured the crowd was as sharp as a ‘rays air’. There was a sharpshooter called Accurate Albert who bore an expression of permanent misery; although not as miserable as his wife, at whom he was shooting. There were four hefty leg-kicking girls direct from the ‘most scandalous entertainment halls of Paris’. And finally, as the crowd whistled and cheered and applauded, and small boys shinned up on to porches and balconies, Mademoiselle Carolista appeared, on the back of a buckboard decorated with red white and blue rosettes, draped in a sparkling red satin robe, sewn with red sequins, and a huge sequin head-dress. She spread her arms, opening her robe and revealing her tight red satin corset and white woolen tights. The cheers grew riotous, and hats were tossed up into the air; and from the balcony of the American Hotel, one over-enthusiastic citizen fired off two pistols, and shouted, ‘Hoorah for Lincoln!’

  Mademoiselle Carolista ceremoniously entered the front door of the W.H. Armitage Dry Goods store so that she could climb up to the roof and begin her death-defying high-wire walk across the street. As she did so, however, Henry noticed a jostling in the crowd on the far side of the street; and saw six or seven hard-faced men in derby hats and workshirts push their way through towards the American Hotel.

  ‘Trouble,’ remarked Edward, swigging more wheat-whiskey, and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

  Henry glanced towards the hotel. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Well, those fellows are what they call bummers. Charley Harrison’s boys, from the Criterion Saloon. Charley Harrison’s a Southerner, by sentiment; and a rascal, by nature. He runs all the best H.H.’s, and three of the best saloons,- and has a hold on the gambling here, too. Those bummers of his are some of the least particular gentlemen you’re likely to meet; so if I were you I wouldn’t say anything like “Hoorah for Lincoln!” especially not from no public balcony.’

  Henry watched as the bummers elbowed their way across the street, and in through the front doors of the American Hotel. After a minute or two, the citizen who had been standing on the balcony to see the show was abruptly tugged in through the upstairs window. The orchestra was playing too noisily for Henry to be able to hear any cries, or blows; but after a moment or two one of the hotel windows was cracked, as if by a man’s back falling against it; and afterwards it was smeared with blood.

  ‘Did you see that?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Surely did,’ nodded Edward. ‘just goes to show that expressing your political sentiments don’t pay much, not in Denver. If you was to yell out Dixie for ever, you’d probably find yourself cudgelled half to death by Wide Awakes.’

  Now there was a delighted moan of anticipation, as Mademoiselle Carolista appeared on the roof of the W.H. Armitage Dry Goods store, and blew kisses down to the crowd. She had discarded her robe, but now she was carrying a red ostrich-plume in each hand, which she twirled around in the air.

  ‘Ain’t going to try to fly, are you?’ one wag shouted out.

  But the general laughter was soon quietened by a dramatic roll of drums, and the appearance on the roof of the show-master, a dapper moustachioed man in a green frock-coat and a high collar, and a hat from which three small flags flew—the Union flag, the French tri-colour, and the Turkish crescent moon. He lifted his hands for silence, and then cried, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Denver! This is the moment you have been waiting for! Mademoiselle Carolista the greatest and most fearless tightrope-walker in the entire world will walk across the street at a height of twenty-two feet without the comfort of a safety-net, and without an artificial means of balance! Not only will she walk, she will dance! An entire ballet by Mozart, or as much as time allows! Not only will she dance, she will juggle, an entertainment not usually included in Mozart ballet! This is the most terrifying tightrope act ever devised, for imagine what would happen if she were to lose her balance and fall! She would break her neck! Crack! Right in front of you! Or worse! So draw the deepest of breaths, ladies and gentlemen, and prepare yourself for the most amazing feat of balancing ever witnessed!’

  Mademoiselle Carolista stepped up now on to the wire itself, testing it first with one foot, then with two, and bouncing up and down slightly to feel the tension. The crowd in the street, two or three hundred of them, were completely silent, each of them trying to imagine what could be worse than breaking your neck. Henry pushed back his chair and stood up, although Edward remained seated, his feet propped on the balcony-rail, quietly singing to himself a long and ribald song about Maggie from Maine.

  ‘Well now, what do you think of her?’ asked Henry, as Mademoiselle Carolista took her first tentative steps out along the wire.

  ‘Too skinny by half,’ said Edward. ‘What I’d like to see up there is somebody substantial, a woman with some meat on her. The kind of woman who would frighten folk not just because she might fall; but because she might fall on them.’

  ‘I think you’re incurable,’ said Henry.

  Edward peered up at Mademoiselle Carolista with one squinting eye. ‘You’re not in love with her, are you?’

  ‘She’s beautiful. She’s Polish, you know. When she was a kid, all her friends called her Zwonky.’

  ‘Zwonky?’ repeated Edward. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She’s staying here. I had breakfast with her this morning, down in the kitchen.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be. There once was a lady named Zwonky, whose face would have scared off a donkey.’

  ‘You keep your rude rhymes to yourself,’ said Henry, and looked around at Edward with an expression which added: I mean it.

  Mademoiselle Carolista had now balanced her way to the middle of the wire, arms extended, back straight, face completely serene. The only sound was the shuffling of the crowd, the faint whistling of the wind across the wire, and a low continuous drum-roll from the orchestra. Henry knew that she wasn’t going to fall, but all the same he kept his teeth buried in the tip of his tongue, and his hands clenched on the balcony-rail, and when the orchestra suddenly struck up with the opening bars of Les Petits Riens, and Mademoiselle Carolista threw up one leg, and twirled around on her pointed t
oe, he let out a gasp just like everybody else in the crowd. As she jumped and danced and even ran along the wire, her head thrown back, the crowd began to cheer and whistle, and even Edward had to sit up and take a look.

  She juggled as she danced; at last tossing the balls down to one of the members of the troupe; and then she brought her act to a stunning finale by standing perched on one leg, her back arched, her arms wide, her eyes closed; just as they had been this morning, when Henry had discovered her balancing on the newel-post.

  The clapping went on and on; and there was stamping of feet and throwing of hats, and even babies. Paper streamers were thrown up from the street so that they trailed across the high-wire; and when Mademoiselle Carolista reappeared in the doorway of the hardware store, once again wrapped in her robe, the shouting and hollering and firing of pistols was deafening.

  Henry said, ‘Isn’t she just fantastic? There isn’t any other word for it, is there? She’s just fantastic.’

  ‘You be warned,’ replied Edward. ‘My motto is: never give your heart to itinerants. You can never count on getting it back.’

  Henry hurried downstairs and shouldered his way through the crowds, getting pink cotton candy stuck to his sleeve as he did so. But at last he managed to get through to Mademoiselle Carolista, and seize her hand, shouting, ‘Nina! That was magic!’

  Nina was glowing and sweating and beaming with pleasure and relief. She reached up and grasped hold of Henry’s hair at the back of his neck, and pulled him down quite roughly to kiss her. There was a chorus of whistling as they did so. She opened her mouth to him, so that he could lick at her teeth, and he tasted perspiration and greasepaint and gin, too. ‘My marvellous fellow!’ she sang out, and lifted Henry’s hand along with hers, so that Henry found himself walking beside her in her tumultuous victory parade, all the way down Larimer Street, and then back again to the American Hotel, where a reception was waiting, laid on by the wealthiest and most influential of Denver’s citizens in the cause of ‘bonhomie, and artistic appreciation’. Everybody crowded into the hotel’s dining-rooms, lined with mirrors and already thick with tobacco smoke, where there were tables laid with all the luxuries that gold could bring to a small mountain community, one whole mile above sea-level. There were heaps of fruit, oranges and apples and nectarines and early kumquats; there were crackling-baked pigs, with cinnamon apples; there was turkey and quail and sage-hen; and there were huge pressed-glass bowls full of cool custards and fruit compotes. There were oysters, too, although they were canned, and frittered mostly, with scrambled eggs and bacon. There was pâtè-de-foie; and deep shining dishes black with caviare.

  Nina held on to Henry’s arm as she was introduced to the bookstore owner David Moffat, who had come to Denver earlier this year, intending to remain long enough to make $75,000 and then to leave but who had already made so much money that he had decided to stay for good. Then there was Luther Kountze, all shirt-front and beady eyes, whose small gold-office had developed into a bank; and the Clark brothers, who were part-owners in Denver’s first mint, along with a smooth-looking man who introduced himself as E.H. Gruber. William Byers was there, too, with a small, pert-looking woman with troublesome brown curls, whom Henry took to be his wife.

  ‘You were startling,’ Henry told Nina, when they had a moment to themselves. A waiter brought them glasses of champagne, and stuttered, ‘Never seen nothing like that, Miss Carolista. That was something special.’

  Nina hugged Henry close to her, and then kissed his cheek. ‘They think I am not quite human, these people. They are in awe of me. That is why I am staying so close to you. It is uncomfortable to be surrounded by people, none of whom think of you as real. You give me all the reassurance I require that I am real, after all.’

  ‘I think we ought to drink a toast,’ said Henry. He was aware of the envious chatter all around him; and the way in which the other men in the dining-room were thinking, you lucky hound, you, if I had two minutes with Mademoiselle Carolista, I’d show her soon enough.

  ‘What toast?’ asked Nina.

  ‘To the incomparable Zwonky,’ said Henry, touching the rim of his glass against hers.

  Nina giggled. ‘You say it so severely. Zwonk-ee! You should say it very soft, listen, jha-von-key.’

  Henry looked down into those dark, dark slanted eyes of hers, and put his arm around her waist, such a slender waist that he could almost have lifted her up in the crook of his arm, he with his epitaph-cutter’s muscles. ‘Jha-von-key; he said, gently. They kissed, and they didn’t mind who was staring at them. There were more whistles, more cheers, and then the tall woman with the fiery hair suddenly began to play her violin, furiously, wildly, and some of the guests began to stamp their feet in time, and clap their hands; and before anybody knew it the dining-room was shaking with dancing.

  Henry led Nina through the dancers to the back of the hotel, where there was a small dusty garden shaded by trees. In the distance, scarcely visible in the thickening heat of the afternoon, the snow that marked the summit of Pike’s Peak lay like a white forgotten handkerchief. Henry clinked glasses with her again, and said, ‘How long are you staying here?’

  ‘Two more days. But we will give no more performances. Once is thrilling, twice is tedious.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t apply to everything,’ smiled Henry. ‘I’d quite like to kiss you again.’

  ‘What is a day without a kiss?’ breathed Nina, and held him close, and kissed him deeply and fiercely. ‘You like women, don’t you?’ she asked, as she let him go at last.

  ‘I don’t know many men that don’t.’

  ‘Ah, but you like them differently. I can feel it.’

  At that moment, the French doors to the dining-room opened, so that their polished windows suddenly reflected the late-afternoon sky and the tracer-work of tree branches, and then a wide-shouldered man in a black coat and a low white collar stepped out, holding in his large hairy hand a half-pint tankard of champagne. He was bald, but his beard was thick and wavy and luxuriant, like the pelt of some well-groomed animal, and he smelled of expensive cologne. Henry thought that he must have been quite handsome once, before he went completely bald, and before his belly grew so huge; but it was only fair to remember that many Western women still liked their men to have enormous stomachs, and in the company of men, a mighty gut was still regarded as the most obvious sign of wealth.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to keep Mademoiselle Carolista all to yourself, friend,’ the man said in a deep, amiable voice. He held out his hand to Nina, and took her hand, and bent forward to kiss it. ‘You’re a spark of real gold amongst the dross, mademoiselle,’ he beamed. Henry wasn’t at all sure whether the man was trying to suggest that he, Henry, was the dross, but he decided to hold his tongue. ‘I watched your act entranced.’

  ‘Henry Roberts,’ said Henry, and held out his hand. The man shook it without even looking at Henry, and announced, ‘Charles Harrison; proprietor of Harrison’s Criterion Saloon and several other local enterprises; at votre service, mademoiselle.’ He said the French words without the slightest attempt at a French pronunciation. ‘Perhaps you would do me the honour of taking a little dinner with me tonight. You know, ah derks, as they say in Paris.’

  Nina coquettishly fluttered her eyelashes. ‘You are very charming, Mr Harrison. But I regret tonight that I am tired. My act always leaves me drained. Soon, I shall be retiring for the evening. A cold compress, a little ice; perhaps a spoonful of eggnog.’

  Charles Harrison’s thick red lips puckered up in impatient disappointment. He still didn’t look at Henry. ‘Well, now, perhaps you’ll be rested tomorrow. Can I count on that?’

  ‘I am not at all sure, I cannot predict. But I will think about it,’ said Nina.

  ‘Well, you’re doing me an honour,’ replied Charles Harrison. He kissed her hand again, and said, ‘Good evening to you, mademoiselle. Good evening, Mr Whatever-you-name-is.’

  He went back into the dining-room, where Henry saw h
im talking to Mrs Enid T. Bradley, of the Ladies Union Aid Society; and then to three pugilistic-looking men in shabby suits and red neckerchiefs.

  ‘Bummers,’ he said.

  ‘He is a powerful man, Mr Harrison,’ replied Nina.

  ‘You know about him?’

  ‘I have never met him; not until now; but one of the girls in our troupe used to work for him, as a harlot. She said that he was very cruel, and that life meant nothing, as far as he was concerned. He shot a blacksmith once, and killed him, not long ago, because the man tried to join him in a game of poker. The things he would do to his women were unmentionable.’

  Henry sipped his champagne. ‘My advice to you would be to stay well away from him.’

  ‘And you? You are a tough fellow, too, aren’t you? Should I also stay away from you?’

  Henry kissed her again. ‘You try it. Then you’ll see what a tough fellow I can really be.’

  He watched her rejoin the reception, greeted by whoops and applause, and he smiled to himself. Perhaps, after all, I’ve struck it lucky. A woman like Zwonky, and a mine full of gold. Perhaps this is God’s compensation for losing Doris. Whatever it is, I’m happy about it, and I’ll take it as it comes.

  That night, at a quarter past midnight, he crossed the landing with bare feet, wincing as the boards creaked with every step; and at last reached Nina’s room at the far end of the corridor, and tapped. Nina said, at once, ‘Henry? Come in,’ and he eased open the door and went inside.

  ‘You are late,’ she smiled. ‘You said midnight; and when midnight struck I was all ready for you. Perhaps I am no longer ready for you now.’